I have already gone on the record supporting the Mayor, primarily because of issues which transcend GLBT issues but affect us all as residents — the state of our schools, the improvements in institutional services, and because he is committed to addressing the issues of rich and poor in our city. I believe the Mayor has the vision and has been energetic in carrying it out. He deserves another term.

I wonder, though, how Vince Gray is helped by Lane’s one-sided account that denies Adrian Fenty any credit and heaps only scorn upon him, since that account is plainly false. You and I have been calling the Spagnoletti memo a red herring for the past six years, but Lane persists in treating it as a magic key. We of course were not ready six years ago to sustain a victory; you have pointed out a key reason. But Lane finds it convenient to act as if only foot-dragging by people like you and me held up progress. Forget preparation, forget strategy, give us what we want right now! Unfortunately for Lane, sensible people know better, and understand that smart, careful preparation made our victory solid and sustainable.

Denying due credit to Mayor Fenty for the superb work of Attorney General Nickles and his staff is not just irresponsible and unjust, it is implausible. I testified on behalf of GLAA against Nickles’s confirmation, backing up our case with 13 footnotes; the result was not our being blackballed but being invited to meet with Nickles to discuss our concerns, which led to two separate tracks of meetings that led to resolution of differences over the DP parentage bill (which is now law, and protects many families) and to improving the Corrections Dept. policy on housing of transgender prisoners. Nickles later defended the marriage bill–having his best attorneys work on those briefs–with the full backing of his boss, the Mayor.

The Mayor’s race this year is between two allies of the GLBT community. I too have many complaints about the current Mayor, which are detailed in GLAA’s “Agenda: 2010.” But the great progress we have made in D.C. has resulted in part from building relationships with public officials, which require not just criticizing them but giving them credit where due. I voted for Vince Gray at the Stein Club endorsement meeting; but I was choosing between two allies. It is our good fortune that that is the case. That fact that we are not faced with a choice between a friend and a foe reflects decades of involvement by LGBT people in the civic life of Washington. That deserves to be celebrated, not denied.

We could have passed a marriage equality law 10 years ago. That was always the easy part. When it was finally introduced, it had a super-majority of 10 introducers and passed 11-2. We did not need the Mayor to use any influence to get those votes. The hard part—and what took so long—was to ensure that once the law passed it would not be overturned. There was both the threat of interference from Congress and the threat of lawsuits and ballot measures.

We didn’t get a Congress that we thought wouldn’t interfere until they passed a D.C. appropriations bill without any social riders. We spent years figuring out how to fix D.C. laws so that any lawsuit to overturn our rights would fail. Phil Mendelson took the lead on that, while Jack Evans handled the numerous tax issues. Adrian Fenty voted for or signed each bill. In the past year, we moved forward 3 bills securing marriage equality. His support was never in question.

Harry Jackson, with backing from the National Organization for Marriage, tried 3 times to get a ballot measure to get a campaign similar to California’s Prop 8 in D.C. An additional measure for an initiative was submitted by another group. In each case, Mayor Fenty’s Attorney General submitted testimony to the Board of Elections and Ethics (BOEE) arguing that the ballot measures would be improper as violations of the Human Rights Act. Harry Jackson took the BOEE to court each time and with appeals, the Fenty administration have brilliantly defended our rights 7 times. Each brief and oral argument was absolutely wonderful. Lambda Legal couldn’t have defended our rights any better. We are waiting for the final ruling by a D.C. court, but I am very optimistic because of the vigorous defense of our rights by the Mayor Fenty’s solicitor general. Mayor Fenty has tackled the hard part of keeping marriage equality.

In regard to the Spagnoletti letter, I have long thought that it was a red herring. Many activists asked Mayor Williams not to make it public, lest we move before we were ready to defend our rights. In the Fenty Administration it was moot. An opinion of an attorney general of a prior administration does not carry any legal weight. It was by then only a historically interesting document. The path we took to success worked precisely because we did not act rashly.

Whatever problems that you have with Mayor Fenty, and I have many, it should not be for how he has handled our right to marriage. On that issue, he deserves high praise.

Respectfully, I disagree.

When it comes to Mayor Fenty’s handling of the HIV/AIDS crisis, his contribution can be chalked up to appointing Dr. Hader, which was certainly a promising first step. However, his contribution ends there.

Most in the DC HIV community will tell you that he is woefully out of touch with what was supposed to be his “number one health priority,” and never provided Dr. Hader the support that was needed to really make headway against the crisis beyond the top notch surveillance system she developed.

But she is gone now; and the Mayor doesn’t seem interested in explaining the circumstances around her departure nor speaking of any efforts he made to prevent her from leaving.

The condom campaign is great; however, its success has hinged largely on community partners doing the heavy lifting of distributing the condoms and lube throughout the city. In fact, the DOH’s main task in this effort is to procure the condoms and lube from Durex, a process that has gone quite badly in the past few months. Throughout most of March and May there were scarce, if any, condoms to be found in bars and many clinics (like WWC) around town because the DOH had run out of them. Less than week before Capital Pride our condom shipments were still on backorder.

As for the recent MSM HIV/AIDS Report, you should know that Fenty’s administration originally planned to give it a “soft release,” late on Friday afternoon this past March, when the “staggering” figures it reported would be hidden and not attract as much media attention. Why? Well, it was pretty bad news, and probably wouldn’t look so good for him or the city. I don’t know what ultimately motivated this decision, but it wasn’t until community activists got wind of this plan and pushed back that it was decided a more visible release on the following Thursday was better. We need someone who’s administration will put our best interests first, and not his.

Also, while numerous US city leaders, and even President Obama, have taken public HIV tests to show solidarity in the fight against HIV/AIDS and promote testing, Fenty has not yet done so. Multiple times he’s been asked to take the test over the past few years, but has refused according to his staff, because it was not his style. It wasn’t until he was asked twice about taking the test during the Gertrude Stein Club Meeting that he finally said he would do it. But at that point, he had no choice.

Finally, the HIV/AIDS Surveillance reports produced under his administration are great, but they do not translate into the action needed to start winning the fight against HIV/AIDS. I don’t have confidence that Fenty appreciates the gravity of this problem in DC; otherwise he would have fought harder to retain Dr. Hader and support her during her tenure. We need a leader with a much greater sense of urgency around HIV in our community.

You know that I admire you tremendously. You provide more inspiration in your pinky finger than Adrian Fenty has in the past three and a half years as Mayor.

I’ve read your passionate writing before and this isn’t anything close to the kind of passion that you are capable of showing. I can’t help but think that is because your heart isn’t in it.

Fenty broke a promise to our community on Day 1 as Mayor by not releasing the Spagnoletti memo. When Council voted to recognize out of State marriages, he was asked by a reporter at WTOP if he would fight an effort of Congress to overturn it. His response, “It depends.”

Fenty never lobbied for votes on the marriage bill. When he was urged to testify in favor of the marriage bill, he refused.

When hate crimes were on the rise, he refused to acknowledge it. When he finally met with GLOV, it was a contentious meeting. THAT, by the way, was the ONLY meeting with an LGBT organization he has taken in the Mayor’s office and he has never had an LGBT Town Hall meeting.

With regard to HIV/AIDS, he just allowed the best thing to ever happen in DC’s fight against the epidemic, Shannon Hader, to leave her position as Director of HAHSTA. Reports from insiders indicate that her vision was “too broad”, “too comprehensive”, and “outside of the Mayor’s narrow vision of count, count, and count some more”. DOH Director Pierre Vigilance continued to alienate her and when the Mayor had to choose, he chose to lose Hader, bringing a stunning setback to the fight against HIV/AIDS.

The only person in this race to show compassion and understanding for the LGBT community is Vince Gray. He is the only candidate in this race that was working to secure as many vote for the marriage bill as possible. He is the only candidate in this race to pledge to fight against any effort to repeal marriage. He is the only candidate in this race that has pledged to develop and implement a comprehensive approach to HIV/AIDS. He is the only candidate in this race with a birth to 24 years education program. He is the only candidate in this race that knows LGBT issues well enough to engage in a discussion without reading from notes.

Fenty has not deserved another term and Vince Gray has made the case for his candidacy for Mayor. The choice is clear. Vince Gray should be our new Mayor.

Respectfully,
Lane